Round 2: TPAF Audio Interview With Bobby King

[Kevlar]

Kevlar why worry of such silly ****

Each to their own dude.

 

[Firefox2000]

Good interview....sad about the PS3 issues though.

But if they cannot update/fix the said issues with the present version of the game, i would certainly be willing to buy that said 2.0 version if it allowed all them to do and fix all the stuff they presently cant.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

Great job JEFF! and thank you FS for playing. Time to listen again.

 

[Richard B]

Okay, my bad.

YouTube crapped out on me at minute 27.

That's why Youtube sucks, and I download clips whenever possible. Some time ago, they went from buffering (when the whole video would download whether you were watching it or not) to streaming (where it is supposed to download as you watch, but it doesn't seem to actually work that way).

 

[kimkom]

Bobby, Jeff, thanks.

I really enjoyed listening to the interview, a lot of positive vibes during that one! Good to hear the thoughts and ideas flowing from both sides. You are obviously passionate about pinball and the future of TPA.

Cheers!

 

[Clawhammer]

Thanks for doing this again, Jeff. Some great news here, particularly about classic Sterns- it sounds like the poll is just for the first machine to be made, and there will be more to come; that's music to my ears. I'm not a PC user, but I'm really happy for you guys that have all held out for that and are finally seeing it come to fruition. I'm also excited to hear that FS is collaborating with Pinball Magazine for ad revenue, sounds like a great relationship that could be beneficial on both sides, and for pinball in general.

 

[SilverBalls]

Very good interview and awesome news that the cab stuff will get some attention. The new difficult settings sounds great too. Thanks Jeff and Bobby.

 

[shutyertrap]

Hey, great interview. Thanks for doing it! I just wanted to say something about the two-player feature mentioned, head-to-head. I'm not against this feature, but the two-player feature that I really want is just what you'd do if you and a friend are playing a two player game on a real table -- you take turns. While your buddy is playing, you hang out and watch them play. Then they lose their ball, and it's your turn. And you just hang out and shoot the breeze and maybe learn a thing or two from each other. Am I just crazy? To me this sounds like the most natural and realistic kind of two player.

Now the thing about the head to head feature with a goal is, you can't see what your friend is doing. And as my friend and I found out with this feature on Pinball FX2, there are ways to exploit it. Like on one table he discovered he could hit the score goal quicker just by intentionally draining the ball and hitting a fairly easy skill shot over and over. Not the way the game is really meant to be played. That's the kind of exploit that might be useable whether it's a specific score goal (first to 5,000,000 or something) or a time limit. Of course it might depend on if you can get extra balls, but you get my point I hope... it invites certain non-pinball types of 'games' to beat the system and get the win. Then you're depending on some kind of honor system, maybe, and, well... I guess I don't have to keep ramblin' about it.

Well, thanks for hearing me out and thanks again for the interview.

I like the idea of watching your opponent play, but how they would implement that would seem to be the sticking point. If it's like watching a video, that'll take up huge bandwidth. If it's your console being 'taken over' by the other player, that'd be kinda crazy. Obviously Rock Band and Guitar Hero did it to an effect, so it is doable.

As for the other challenges...finding exploits is part of the fun! You are outwitting the other player. I know I've drained on purpose to collect the bonus to put me over the top while playing Zen online. Call that situational awareness!! Look, we play 5 minute challenge in the chat room all the time, and you wanna talk honor system, there it is coz there is no way of checking what anyone is claiming. Having it be organized through the console would be amazingly fantastic. Shoot, I'd settle for any kind of online interaction with TPA at this point.

 

[Chris Dunman]

Jeff and Bobby, as good as ever. Much appreciated gents. Looking forward to the next...

 

[cubemoss]

I like the idea of watching your opponent play, but how they would implement that would seem to be the sticking point. If it's like watching a video, that'll take up huge bandwidth. If it's your console being 'taken over' by the other player, that'd be kinda crazy. Obviously Rock Band and Guitar Hero did it to an effect, so it is doable.

As for the other challenges...finding exploits is part of the fun! You are outwitting the other player. I know I've drained on purpose to collect the bonus to put me over the top while playing Zen online. Call that situational awareness!! Look, we play 5 minute challenge in the chat room all the time, and you wanna talk honor system, there it is coz there is no way of checking what anyone is claiming. Having it be organized through the console would be amazingly fantastic. Shoot, I'd settle for any kind of online interaction with TPA at this point.

Well, good point about the chat room honor system. But think of folks who haven't played before, who are presumably gonna be matched up against strangers... it could make it less fun for them. But like I said, I'm not arguing against having that mode, I just wanted to describe the mode that I think of when I think of playing a two player game on a pinball table.

As for your first point, well the way it would work is like other multiplayer online games like Halo or COD or Madden. The network code isn't transmitting the video image, it's just transmitting information about the state and position of players and objects. Each player's console then "draws" the image. Lag wouldn't even be as much of an issue because the player who is waiting for their turn doesn't need to do any actions in response. There are a few games already that let you watch other players, some racing games do this for example. But I mean, this is just a two player scenario where people take turns, like checkers or chess but just a bit more flashing lights and awesome sounds!

 

[haj]

Well, good point about the chat room honor system. But think of folks who haven't played before, who are presumably gonna be matched up against strangers... it could make it less fun for them. But like I said, I'm not arguing against having that mode, I just wanted to describe the mode that I think of when I think of playing a two player game on a pinball table.

As for your first point, well the way it would work is like other multiplayer online games like Halo or COD or Madden. The network code isn't transmitting the video image, it's just transmitting information about the state and position of players and objects. Each player's console then "draws" the image. Lag wouldn't even be as much of an issue because the player who is waiting for their turn doesn't need to do any actions in response. There are a few games already that let you watch other players, some racing games do this for example. But I mean, this is just a two player scenario where people take turns, like checkers or chess but just a bit more flashing lights and awesome sounds!

by sending flipper and nudge inputs, can you yet not reproduce identical behavior for random factors on the other device, can you?

 

[cubemoss]

by sending flipper and nudge inputs, can you yet not reproduce identical behavior for random factors on the other device, can you?

Well, I'm not sure if I understand you, but think about all the complex and random things a game like Halo keeps track of. 16 players, each with their own multiple weapons, some in vehicles, etc., knocking things over and blowing them up based on a physics system. I mean, it's not a turn-based game but if one player wants to, they can just stop and watch what all the others are doing. I'm not an expert on programming or coding but I think it's safe to say... it is technically possible.

Anyhow, I don't mean to focus this whole thread on just this one idea... there was a lot of great info in the interview.

 

[Shaneus]

Great interview as always, thanks to Jeff and Bobby!

That was a good mention of Pinball Magazine, too... I had no idea there was one, but if it's physical and can be shipped to Australia, I'll definitely get it! Woo!

 

[spoonman]

Chalk me up as yet another saddened Sony TPA owner....

Farsight would probably just as soon kill off the PS3/Vita ports as they have the Xbox 360 and just continue to pump out iOS/Android/PC tables.

On the matter of not being able to fix the PS3 version.. That's really sad, especially since they've been telling us they are working on all these improvements.

They could fix all of this by releasing a TPA 2.0 so it's easily upgradable.
While they are at it they could add the ability to play timed demos of all tables just like ZEN2 has done.

It would really be in their best interest to make current PS3 owners happy as they will eventually be PS4 owners and we tend to remember when a company tells you...
"Oops... sorry about that, but hey! you can always buy the PS4 version right?" - paraphrasing of course.

They have also been telling me they were looking into adding the ability to add XMB music playback on the PS3 since WPHOF in 2008, and that addition literally takes less than an hour
to add, so it's pretty obvious they don't wish to improve the things they can improve either..

 

[Mark W**a]

Good interview.

They shouldn't feel bad about Game Center achievements. Who cares. Achievements are so 2008 lol.

And it's got the hall of fame scores in game, and standard and wizard goals that's more than enough.

 

[kimkom]

Good interview.

They shouldn't feel bad about Game Center achievements. Who cares. Achievements are so 2008 lol.

And it's got the hall of fame scores in game, and standard and wizard goals that's more than enough.

Ha ha. Agree. Achievements are for the kids. Pinball is all about the scores!

 

[Jim O'Brien]

More bad news for Sony picking right where we left off of interview #1, I'd be up for Pinball Arcade 2.0 as long as it did not cost money as mentioned before if they did something like Zen did with the release of Zen Pinball 2 I'm pretty sure that would make a lot of customers very happy. I'm patiently waiting for controller support on Android and I'm not buying any more tables for PS3 we don't have a game mode on our television and I refuse to run at 720p to avoid any lag.

 

[Peaches]

I believe table demo's are left out purposely on PS3 because they know the quality of a few tables would blow a sale.

 

[neglectoid]

thanks jeff and bobby.

 

[Shaneus]

Good interview.

They shouldn't feel bad about Game Center achievements. Who cares. Achievements are so 2008 lol.

And it's got the hall of fame scores in game, and standard and wizard goals that's more than enough.

Don't forget actual scores linked across via Facebook as well.

We should start up a thread/area (maybe one only visible to members above a certain number of posts? Mods?) with actual Facebook details so we can get each other's scores in the regular high score lists. I know I've seen my brother's name appear in tables on mine more than a few times.